


Store #6397 After Dark

by unquietspirit



Series: PBJ Amnesty [5]
Category: Fake News RPF, Real News RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Retail, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1687040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unquietspirit/pseuds/unquietspirit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein our favorite newsies work the overnight shift of a 24-hour big box store.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Store #6397 After Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Posted as part of WIP Amnesty 2014, and as such, will never be finished. Inspired by the almost-year I had a really stupid fucking job that I only survived by making up fic in my head while I was stocking shelves, and dedicated to the backroom manager who was eerily similar to Keith in both temperament and job-keeping skills.
> 
> I de-aged almost everyone to a certain degree. Anderson, Sanjay, and Isha are early-to-mid 30s, Keith and Brian are early 40s, everyone else is early-to-mid 20s. Also, the store's number spells out "news" on a phone keypad. That's not important for understanding the story, but I thought it was clever, so.

On her first night at her new job, Rachel was greeted by a cacophony of several different loud conversations mixed with the beeping of the time-clocks as people punched in. Nobody took any notice of her. She spotted a coat rack attached to the wall beside a fire door and took her hoodie off to hang it up, then stepped over to the nearest time-clock. But when she swiped her nametag, rather than the short beep that everyone else had gotten, it made a long, discordant sound, and the message _INVALID BADGE_ popped up on the screen. She frowned at it, wondering if she hadn’t been properly added to the system yet.

“Flip it around,” said a voice in her ear. Rachel turned to see a guy about her age with a conservative brown haircut and glasses. “The barcode on the back has to be facing the fire door,” he elaborated, pointing with his thumb.

She followed his advice and tried again, and this time the screen showed a menu of options. She pressed the button for _CLOCK IN_ and it beeped, reading _PUNCH ACCEPTED, RACHEL_.

“Thanks,” she told the guy.

“No problem. I take it you’re new. My name’s Stephen.”

“Rachel.”

“I know,” he said with a grin, tapping the time-clock screen. “Welcome to Store #6397. We’re really not that bad, once you get used to us.”

Before she could ask what he meant, a black woman, noticeable both because she wasn’t wearing the standard uniform of khaki pants and a green shirt and because she was utterly gorgeous, began to speak, and the conversations around them died down as everyone listened to her.

“Good morning, people. The time is now 10:01PM, so I’m beginning the meeting. Kristen, please tell those guys still in the break room to get out here.”

A young woman with curly light brown hair ducked into the adjoining room and returned after a second with a few more people.

Meanwhile, the other woman continued in her British-accented voice, reading off of a clipboard. “Sales are down  five percent for the day and three percent for the week, but we’re still busy, so we might turn that around and make our day, at least. Some notes from yesterday: please make sure you’re bringing back any overstock you have _before_ lunch. It’s not fair to Keith and Chris in the backroom to bring it all in at six o’clock and give them only an hour to bin everything.”

“Hear hear,” muttered a large man standing near the break room door. He was older than the rest, and she could only assume he was Keith or Chris, as his crossed arms hid his nametag.

“Also, make sure you return all shopping trolleys to the front—”

“Shopping _carts_ ,” interrupted the man that was standing next to her, with a roll of his eyes. “Honestly, Isha, you’ve lived in America for seven years now. Learn the language.”

“I find that racist,” said another British voice. Rachel glanced around to see it belonged to a guy with a startling resemblance to Harry Potter. “The Queen’s English has served my people well for many centuries, and I will not abandon it now. Isha, if you need me to defend you against this racist pig,” — he pointed an accusing finger at the gray-haired man, who was giggling — “just say the word.”

“Thank you for your support, Oliver,” said Isha, “but I can take Anderson down single-handedly any day of the week.”

That prompted a round of catcalls and taunting directed at Anderson. He held up his hands. “I surrender. I can’t fight her anyway; she’s my boss.”

“Too right, I am,” said Isha. “As I was saying, please return all shopping _trolleys_ to the front of the store. We’re finding a lot of empty ones in the backroom and around electronics. I think that’s it for notes.” She flipped a page on her clipboard. “Our truck tonight was 1560, and picks are… 900.”

Several people groaned, while Rachel wondered what the hell a “pick” was and why 900 of them were bad.

“I know, but we’ve got all hands on deck, so I have confidence we’ll get it done. Now, areas tonight. Stephen and Jon, I’m putting both of you in pharmacy, and if you get that done before seven, please help Sam and Kristen in HBA. They have ten hours. Jason, you’re in pets. I don’t care if you and Sam use breaks to snog, but don’t do it by the aquariums. You’re scaring the fish.”

Rachel saw the dark-haired guy she was talking to glance sheepishly at the blonde girl standing next to him. “Sorry,” he said.

“Wyatt, you’re in toys and sporting goods. Aasif, hardware and automotive. Oliver, you’re in electronics, and you might also be getting called to the front to run register. Olivia, housewares and domestics. Amy, you’re in apparel, and Paul, you’re in infants.”

“I think you meant to say, ‘Paul, you’re _an_ infant,’” said Stephen.

“Yeah, that joke’s still funny after three nights straight,” Paul replied.

“The joke _is_ getting old, Stephen,” Isha said. “What else? Oh! New girl. Rachel, where are you?”

Rachel raised her hand tentatively.

“There you are. Everyone, this is Rachel, our new cashier. Tonight’s her first night, so please make her feel welcome. _No_ pranks. Let’s not forget what happened with Olivia.”

“Again, Olivia, we’re really sorry about that,” said a guy who, according to his name-tag, was Jon. “We obviously didn’t think it through.”

“Please. I’ve had far worse,” Olivia replied.

“Still,” Isha said, “I don’t think I could talk Brian out of firing someone if it happened again, so-”

“Brian wouldn’t fire Jon,” Aasif interrupted. “Jon’s his _favorite_.”

Jon smirked and shrugged. “What can I say? We bonded over Springsteen in my job interview.”

“Regardless, _no pranks_ ,” Isha said. “Alright, that’s it. Go pull pallets. Front end, stick behind.”

“You’re front end, if you didn’t know,” Stephen said.

“Yeah, they covered that in orientation,” Rachel replied. “But thanks.”

“Good luck,” he said, and walked off with the rest of the stockers.

 

Apart from Rachel, “front end” seemed to consist of Anderson and a man who hadn’t spoken in the meeting. She stepped forward to join them, and Isha turned to her. “Rachel, this is Anderson, your supervisor and sponsor. He’s the one you can go to with any questions or problems. And this is Sanjay, our other cashier on overnights. He’ll be doing most of your hands-on training with the register.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sanjay said, with a broad, white smile.

“You, too,” she replied. Anderson also gave her a smile, but he couldn’t greet her properly because Isha was talking to him now.

“Normally I’d want her to get started on computer tutorials right away, but with the system being the way it’s been for the past few days, I think she should just shadow Sanjay for awhile to start. I’m giving you stationery, and you can have her help with that so she can learn stocking, too. Our other focus tonight is returns. We can’t have any trolleys or full bins at the service desk in the morning.”

“Got it,” he said. “Though I still say it’s ‘carts’.”

“Oh, begone with you, Cooper,” Isha said, waving a hand dismissively.

Anderson grinned again and turned away, gesturing to Rachel and Sanjay to follow him. “Sanjay, you can head up front. I’m going to have Rachel help me pull the stationery pallet first, and then we’ll be up.”

Sanjay nodded and turned away to push through the swinging double doors that lead to the sales floor.

“Now,” said Anderson to her, “any questions so far?”

“Uh. I got how everyone’s been assigned an area for stocking, but what are ‘picks’?” she asked.

“That’s merchandise that was previously marked as overstock, but which the system says can now go out on the floor. It’s taken out of the bins — that’s these shelves,” he explained, gesturing to the wide, floor-to-ceiling shelves they were walking past in the narrow hallway, “ — and put on pallets or carts to be stocked. Of course, what the system says and what actually fits on the floor are sometimes two very different things, but most of the time it works. They’re just a pain because they take longer to do than new freight. That’s why everyone groaned when they heard there were 900 of them.”

As he spoke, the hallway opened up into a huge room with aisles of more shelves, all stacked with boxes, and lines of square wooden pallets with still more boxes. Rachel was sure she’d never seen so much cardboard in her life.

“This is the backroom,” Anderson continued. “Well, technically, the whole area with personnel and the break room is the backroom too, but this is the only part that gets referred to that way. That guy over there is Keith, and he’s in charge back here. Unless Isha happens to be back here too, in which case she is. Don’t let Keith alarm you. He’s really harmless.”

As if on cue, Keith, who was the same large man that had said ‘hear hear’ in the meeting, snapped at one of the stockers. “ _Don’t_ put that there. Can’t you see that’s overstock from last night? Put it over under aisle one.”

The stocker, Aasif, replied, “There’s no room under aisle one. Lambchop said to put it here.”

“Oh, for— never mind, I’ll do it. Go pull a pallet or something,” Keith said. He took the long, L-shaped cart away from Aasif and called, “Chris! Where are you?”

Rachel didn’t get to see what happened after that, because Anderson lead her into one of the aisles and grabbed a metal handle that was attached by means of a two-foot-long pole to a wheeled base. He pulled it out from under the shelf, and she saw that the base was split into two forks, each about half a foot wide, three feet long, and set about a foot apart.

“This is a pallet jack, used, funnily enough, for moving pallets. You stick the forks under the top deck of the pallet and then push this lever down and pump the handle to raise it.” He demonstrated, and the forks lifted off the floor, parallel to it. “Then you put the lever in the middle position — that’s neutral — and wheel the pallet to wherever you want to go. Once you’re there, squeeze the lever up to drop the forks.” Again, he demonstrated, and then asked, “Any questions?”

“Just one,” Rachel said, pointing to the part of the base where the pole attached. “Why does it have ‘Ursula, Queen of the Realm’ written on it?”

“Oh, the stockers wanted a way to tell their favorites apart, so they named all of them,” he said, and then gave the pallet jack what could only be called a fond pat. “Ursula’s my girl, but you can use her tonight.”

“Um… thanks?”

Just then, she heard Stephen’s voice raised in a shout from the next aisle over. “Alright, who took Sweetness?!”

“It’s a pallet jack,” Isha’s cultured British tones replied from farther off. “Use another one.”

“How _dare_ you, madame,” Stephen replied, in what Rachel hoped was mock outrage. “Sweetness and I are in a _relationship_.”

“No one took your damn pallet jack, Stephen,” Keith’s voice said. “It’s by the claims bins.”

“We’re not crazy, I swear,” Anderson said, seeing the look on her face. “Well, Stephen might be a little. He kind of has a split personality.”

Privately, Rachel thought the guy who referred to a pallet jack as his ‘girl’ shouldn’t throw stones, but she kept that to herself. He was her new boss, after all.

“Now,” he said, “let’s find the stationery pallet.”

 

Out on the sales floor, Jon had left Stephen to look for Sweetness and was delivering a pallet of dog food bags to pets when the opening bars of “Walkin’ on the Sun” started playing over the PA system. He heard Sam groan loudly from one of the HBA aisles and called, “Jones! Are you knocking up your wife again?”

Jason poked his head around an endcap full of flea repellant. “It’s not my fault that she just can’t resist my manly good looks.”

“Very funny, Jason,” Sam replied from behind Jon. “Need I remind you that we can barely afford the two we have now? Anyway, I was groaning because some idiot forgot to put the music on shuffle. If they’re going to make us listen to the same crappy two-hour playlist every night on a loop, shuffle is the least they could do.”

“It’s not _all_ crappy,” said Jon.

“Jon, buddy, I appreciate The Boss as much as you do… well, maybe not _that_ much, but a lot,” said Kristen as she maneuvered an HBA pallet into place beside a feature, “and even _I_ get sick of listening to four of his songs repeating every two hours, every night.”

Jon gasped. “Blasphemy!”

 

Notes:

Jason dedicates (and sings) Hey Soul Sister to Sam every time it plays  
Jon and Stephen looking for herpes lotion by the condoms  
Anderson has a crush on Keith, and everyone (including Keith) knows  
Amy is sick but can’t go home or afford a doctor’s visit  
“Oh, dear lord, who let Keith on the PA system?” (“Reminder to all associates to bring your overstock back. Yes, this means you.”)  
speculation about whether Jon and Stephen are actually together  
Aasif and Olivia playing ping-pong in the breakroom at lunch  
Sanjay’s background (dropped out of med school before his final year to take care of family)  
someone wants paint at 4am (the Lambchop scene! yay!)  
Keith being unusually nice to Rachel (pallet parking lesson)  
Wyatt “accidentally” drops the CD player and Oliver says he loves him  
Stephen leads a Banana Boat Song sing-a-long at the end of the shift  
going to IHOP in the morning  
Keith recruits Rachel into his union-organizing plan

 

Sequel (The Battle for Store #6397):

Keith gets fired for attempting to organize a union. Everyone goes on strike and starts a boycott to get him rehired, but after they succeed he decides to quit anyway and be a union-organizer full time. Meanwhile, lots of K/A action and other stuff, including this scene that takes place during the strike, while everyone is sitting in front of the store:

 

“Doesn’t it ever get you down,” Oliver began, leaning back on his hands braced against the sidewalk, “how consumerist this society is? And I include Britain in that, but you guys really take the cake. I mean,” — he gestured expansively to the building behind them — “that is roughly two acres of crap, ninety-five percent of which no-one ever needs. Have you ever just looked at all that shit and gotten overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it? For example, take deodorant. I was in pharmacy one night, and I counted all the different varieties of deodorant. Want to know how many there are?”

“I have a feeling our wants don’t really matter in this instance,” Jon replied sardonically.

“Forty-seven. There are forty-seven different varieties of deodorant, from twelve different brands. And all for what? Who dictates that body-odor is so offensive, anyway? I happen to like it. I say lift your arms proudly, America!” He raised his arms in a V shape. Kristen wrinkled her nose and scooted a few inches down the curb, away from him.


End file.
